The Art of Derek Dohren

painting, writing, photography

blog

Living in Granada, with its attendant places of interest, I’ve never had much time for the throngs of visitors who flock to its world famous tourist attractions. I’ve always seen them as a bit of a nuisance. For starters they get in my way as I try to cross the city. They walk too slowly, often whole groups of them at a time blocking the pavement, giving no consideration to us locals going about our business. I make a point of avoiding the places they go to eat because I can’t stand the noise they make. They endlessly photograph things and they wear terrible clothes. It’s fair to say I’ve got a lot of unresolved issues, so on this extended holiday it’s done me no harm at all to walk a few miles in their shoes. When I return home I will do so with more respect for the humble tourist. I’ve enjoyed being one myself, though perhaps it’s fair to say I haven’t always enjoyed being seen as one. And that serves me right, I guess.

All around Spain, up and over the Scottish Highlands, and back down to the ancient sites of southern England, the boots have indeed been on the other feet. Ambling about moorland, street and cathedral interior, camera slung around the neck and queueing up for overpriced attractions, only occasionally have I felt like the sucker I must have seemed to the locals. By and large I’ve gone willingly to the slaughter and pretty much loved every minute of it. I’ve even worn terrible clothes. And yet, here I am, with my holiday drawing to a close, wondering about the validity of all those things I’ve seen and done.

Sure, it’s been fun soaking up the sights (and not traipsing into work every day). It’s just that I’m starting to feel a little vague about the nature and purpose of this thing we blithely call ‘culture’. What is it exactly? We assume that to be cultural is a beneficial thing, good for the soul, and something to be pursued, but I found myself sitting in a café in the historic city of Bath yesterday musing on the words of the late Terence McKenna who once famously said, “Culture is not your friend.” I’d never fully appreciated his observations until now.

He went on to say: “Culture is for other people’s convenience and the convenience of various institutions, churches, companies, tax collection schemes, and what have you. It is not your friend. It insults you. It disempowers you. It uses and abuses you. None of us are well treated by culture.”

We see what we’re allowed to see, experience what we are steered towards. There is no real freedom. I was disappointed to discover the Roman bathhouse in Bath was largely a modern construction, piled on top of the original ruins. All very well done, but you know, sort of fake. Stonehenge has one of its pillars propped up by concrete. Parts of the Alhambra’s ornate decoration is the work of modern craftsmen. I’m not sure any of this matters but I think it should.

The thrust of McKenna’s argument was that culture locks us into a controlled way of thinking, a particular way of behaving that negates the need to question. It shapes what we eat and drink, influences the things we buy and colours what we aspire to, the type of cinema and theatre we choose to watch and the music we listen to. We are so inculcated with the moral dictates of those who rule over us that true freedom of exploration and of expression is virtually non-existent. Tourists are often a visible manifestation of this, buying tickets, crossing off sights as they go, taking the money shot at the annointed places. A lot of this behaviour appears mindless. And I’m not trying to take any high ground here. I’m guilty too of being a mindless tourist. That’s my whole point. In the heat of battle for that knock-out view self-awareness can take a back seat.

I didn’t feel this so keenly as I travelled through Spain, not because it wasn’t true of me. The thought just never occurred, even during the quiet moments of downtime. And though I was familiar with McKenna and his work I’d felt he was guilty of an over simplification of the facts. All societies have to have some kind of culture don’t they, a set of values and aesthetics that is wholly agreed upon within the group? It’s just how the world works, how human beings function.

Well, I don’t think it’s necessarily a universal truth. Nor do I think that all tourists are empty headed and selfish. Certainly there were moments when I was in Bath when I felt that the UK had finally been turned into one gigantic theme park, designed purely to soak even more money out of people who are already up to their eyes in debt. But I’m telling myself this is simply the by-product of seven weeks of touring. Normal service, and normal thinking will resume shortly.

Visiting Neolithic sites in Scotland and England really stirred in me a desire to take a wider perspective on so-called culture. For example, no one is sure what many of these ancient societies were up to when they constructed their stone circles and it’s refreshing to hear an increasing number of commentators say so. At Avebury, some 25 miles north of the more famous Stonehenge site, you can walk amongst the stones and form your own theories. Some people scoff at the visitors who hug the stones or who claim to feel ‘energies’ pulsing through the earth here. I found it oddly life affirming to see the absence of a recorded history forced upon visitors, the lack of some agreed narrative for what happened there. I saw artists literally drawing their own conclusions, children clambering over the stones, and others simply gazing in awe. As at many of the sites on Orkney there is magic and wonder at being allowed to simply ponder the possibilities.

Aldous Huxley, another advocate of counter-culturalism claimed that “History is the record, among other things, of the fantastic and generally fiendish tricks played upon itself by culture-maddened humanity.” It does one a power of good to visit a place where no official history has been laid down and force fed to you, where nothing has been faked to fit someone else’s agenda. That’s not to say that ignorance is to be cherished but it does remind you that there is a liberating freedom in not knowing. We should revel in that more often.

Saint Magnus cathedral set a tone for my visit to the Orkneys. There was an absence of that grandeur one feels in more traditional larger cathedrals and you sensed a real affinity between it and the local population. It’s not merely a building maintained as a tourist attraction but remains an active and genuine part of the fabric and soul of the islands. The other things I saw there too, the various Neolithic, bronze age and iron age sites, had a rawness and lack of polish about them that readily suggested the lives of real people.

Perhaps it’s something you can also feel in some Mediterranean sites, maybe in Pompeii or in other parts of Italy or Greece but I’ve never really felt it in Spain. The ruins, cathedrals, palaces and gardens I have wandered around in Spain, though dating from more recent times, feel inaccessible in many ways, belonging as they did to people unlike those who inhabit the same places today. In Orkney, you feel that there’s a very close link between the current indigenous people and those of historic sites like Skara Brae or the Tomb of the Eagles. There’s nothing polished up and packaged here.

One of the guides, an elderly lady, told a small group of us at one of the ancient monuments about how her life as a child on the island in the days before electricity and running water retained many similarities with those iron age ancestors. When describing the typical rituals of life in an iron age house she could almost have been talking about her grandparents.

Only while walking amongst the eerily magnificent standing stones do you feel the frustration of not understanding what was going on, of not being able to get inside the heads of those who constructed these places. Their motives, skills and methods remain elusive to us still no matter how many theories are put forward. I suspect whatever ideas we have are some way off the mark to the reality.

Recent history gapes right back at you also. In Scapa Flow the masts and hulls of war time wrecks breach the surface waters. They are a shocking sight when first seen. The Italian chapel, built by prisoners of war (WW2) clings stubbornly to barren land just off one of the causeways. It’s all very very human.

As I saw on Skye bus loads of tourists are pouring onto the islands. This is probably welcome, maybe even necessary for the local economy but I’m sure it comes as an unpleasant surprise to many of the visitors how rough and ready the bill of fayre is awaiting them. The Tomb of the Eagles requires the visitor to hike a mile across a clifftop moorland. The only way into the tomb is to lie flat on a trolley and to pull yourself through a small tight tunnel. It’s cold and it’s damp and I imagine on windy days you may risk being blown into the North Sea. And I went in July.

I left Orkney feeling a huge sense of respect for the place. There’s a lot to see and I only scratched at the surface. It’s another place I hope to go back to and visit. If I did manage to return it would be a dreadful shame to find it gentrified.

Every inch forward I moved from the Cromarty Firth took me further north than I’ve ever been before in my life. John O’Groats was one of those odd experiences. A place I’d heard and read about most of my life (forever twinned with England’s Land’s End, it’s ingrained in the brain of every Briton), it wasn’t really what I’d imagined. That said, I have no idea what it was I had actually expected. Let’s just say it was ‘unfussy’. It’s a place that wears its mantle in the collective UK psyche very lightly. Perhaps John O’Groats understands and accepts its role as a spot on the map that people urgently want to get to or get away from. There’s no need for any lingering in between.

And so it was I drove onto the catamaran in search of the next adventure. That made it a nap hand of bus, train, airplane, car, and boat as modes of transport on my recent travels. Oh, and a lot of ‘on foot’ stuff too I suppose. The jolt of disconnection as we pulled away from the jetty and the mainland was surprisingly unsettling but within minutes we were in open sea and there was no point in dwelling on it.

An hour later we cruised into Saint Margaret’s Hope on South Ronaldsay, one of the 70 isles that make up the Orkneys. It was genuinely exciting to explore a whole new world and off I drove to make my way to Kirkwall, the capital town on these islands.

Saint Magnus Cathedral, Kirkwall, Orkney

I was surprised how big Orkney is. Again, I’m not really sure what my expectations were, but there were plenty of long roads and rolling hills, and farmland seemed to stretch to the horizon line through my windscreen. Kirkwall is 15 miles from Saint Margaret’s Hope, connected by a series of causeways linking together the larger isles. Seeing the wrecks of old warships in the waters of Scapa Flow was a shock, particularly while trying to keep a straight line over the causeways.

Kirkwall is an unpretentious town. It has the feel of a northern English mill town, with its squat sandstone buildings and grey slate roofs. Dominating the centre of town is Saint Magnus Cathedral, a twelfth century construction built in the Roman style with striking alternating bands of red and yellow sandstone.

The tomb of explorer John Rae in Saint Magnus Cathedral. Rae was the true discoverer of the north-west passage, not Franklin as history books often misinform

It goes against my better judgement to acknowledge that I’ve grown to love visiting cathedrals. It’s something I’ve talked about previously in this blog. Having just toured Spain and visited several magnificent Spanish cathedrals I have to say that Kirkwall’s contribution to the field more than holds its own. It’s not large by any means. I wouldn’t say its exterior is particularly beautiful or ornate but there is something else here I never once felt in Spain. There’s a true warmth inside and it felt like, dare I say, a cozy place to me. There was no feeling of threat or of the supernatural. I suppose its relative smallness facilitates this but I didn’t feel any diminished sense of respect for it over that. Quite the opposite in fact. Maybe that cold sense of clinical power I feel in the larger cathedrals is an overrated quality. After all, there’s more than one way to skin a cat.

Saint Magnus was said to have been a good and kindly man. His bones are interred in one of the pillars inside the cathedral. I think somehow the place has taken on his persona.

It was with great anticipation that I steered my car over the Skye road bridge and into Kyleakin. The last time I’d visited I’d been a passenger and it had been easier to take in the sights. This time I had to focus more on the road. That said, as is typical for this part of the world the weather wasn’t particularly welcoming and low cloud reduced the sightseeing possibilities anyway.

I did an island tour and tried to get my bearings on the place again, pulling over now and then to take a few photos. There were things I instantly recognised but others that didn’t chime with my memories. It felt good to be back but the magic was holding out on me.

The Red Cuillins, from Sligachan

I noticed this phenomenon on my Spanish tour. Sometimes it would take a day or two before I got into the fabric of a place and really felt its essence. Some places, like Bilbao or Valencia, hit you straight between the eyes, but others demand more of your time before yielding up their charms. I’d felt an immediate love for Skye back in 1995 but the vibe wasn’t quite there now. Low cloud and general dankness weren’t helping and neither was a mounting frustration that things weren’t wholly as I’d remembered them.

It wasn’t really until the second day that it happened. The weather was brighter and I’d got my bearings on the place. An impromptu walk to the Old Man of Storr was the unlikely catalyst that finally broke the ice between me and the Isle of Skye. The rest of the day passed in a magical haze. Was it the reflected bliss of nostalgia? A little, perhaps, but there’s no doubt in my mind that there is something very special about this place too. I was an exhausted but happy traveller when I got back to the mainland and my hotel.

My first visit, 21 years previously, had been at a pivotal moment in the island’s history. The completion of the bridge has brought about a quantum leap in tourism. Everywhere I went was thronged by bus loads of visitors, from all corners of the world. A double edged sword I’m sure. It’s no longer possible to visit Skye’s wonderful places and find yourself there alone. That’s a shame of course but, for the time being at least, the charm remains. Yes, I still think Skye is my favourite place on Earth.

But I’m moving on again – and my drift northwards continues. Next stop, John O’Groats.

Barely a week has passed since I left Cádiz and I’ve had precious little time to process the events of my Spanish travels. After spending a night at home in my own bed I took another bus journey, this time to Málaga, in readiness for a flight over to the UK for the next part of my extended holiday. There was only enough time to unpack, tip the sand out of my suitcase, wash a few things, water my plants, re-pack and then engage a different mindset for the coming trip.

On arrival at Liverpool’s John Lennon airport I was to pick up a hire car. I hadn’t driven a vehicle of any sort for over six years and over the previous weeks I had noticed a little bit of anxiety at the back of my mind as to how difficult driving again might be. I needn’t have worried. As soon as I sat in the vehicle it was as if a switch was thrown and I magically ‘had the knowledge’. After driving half a mile or so I was pleasantly reminded of how much fun driving is.

So, after a blissful couple of days of grey miserable rain and catching up with family and friends in Liverpool I was on the road again. First stop was Glasgow and another catch-up with friends I hadn’t seen for too long. I continued north and drove on up to Rannoch Moor and through the Glencoe pass and beyond. Kinlochewe may not be the most well-known part of the Scottish Highlands but it’s a great base to explore the sparsely populated Wester Ross region. But I’d really come here to visit the Isle of Skye. I had spent three days on the island in 1995 and have always since referred to the place as my most favourite on Earth. Was this a case of romanticizing a fading memory?

One way to find out.

On that earlier visit the bridge connecting the island to the mainland had yet to be opened. It was still a few days from completion and we had made the final few hundred metres over from the Kyle of Lochalsh by boat. Now, it was a genuine thrill guiding my hire car over the bridge and finally making my return after 21 years.

1. On long bus journeys avoid sitting in a front seat where you have a full view of the driver. I sat in the front row three times and was horrified every time I saw the driver take his hands off the wheel to fiddle with a bottle of water or try and unwrap a sweet. Only once the bus’s wheels hit the rumble strips on the motorway would the driver yank back control of the wheel. I was convinced our driver from Granada to Cartagena was drunk until I realized he was actually demonstrating consummate control of the vehicle. I just wish I hadn’t repeatedly witnessed it. It’s better to be at the back where you are oblivious to what’s going on up top.

2. And speaking of buses, it’s common in Spain for two buses heading for the same destination to leave the same bus station at the same time. It’s your responsibility to make sure you’re on the right one. It’s usually not the one you think it is. It’s the other one. The one that left a few seconds earlier. You then have to get off the ‘wrong’ bus, even though it has empty seats and you have a valid ticket for the journey, have your bag removed from the hold, go to the ticket office and buy another ticket for the next bus. Try harder to make sure you get on the right bus next time. Repeat cycle as many times as required.

3. Hotels or hostals which are located in the centre of busy tourist cities but which score an average mark of only 5.4 out of 10 for customer satisfaction on booking.com and have ‘rooms available’ at suspiciously cheap prices, are probably best avoided unless you want to spend the night in a tiny filthy death trap. Seems obvious now, that one.

4. For your next holiday decide where you want to go and simply look up pictures of it on the Internet instead. That way you can stay at home with all your creature comforts for two weeks and save a lot of money.

5. Many cities in Spain have corresponding place names in South America. Didn’t you ever study history in school? If you are getting frustrated tramping around, let’s say Cartagena, in the awful heat wondering why your hostal doesn’t seem to exist it’s worth checking that you didn’t accidentally print off the google street map of, for example, Cartagena, Colombia. Unfortunately, though these places have the same names, the street configurations are different.

I felt bad about Sevilla. There’s so much to appreciate in the city, aside from the stupendous cathedral, but I just didn’t enjoy my visit. It was so hot. I spent a lot of time holed up anywhere they had air conditioning. I’ve experienced worse, in Granada many times, but somehow I hadn’t fully anticipated how bad it would be. I think coming down from the north, and particularly Oviedo, wasn’t great preparation. For whatever reason, I couldn’t handle it.

But it’s done now and so to my final destination, Cádiz. The temperatures here are much more friendly. I was told it’s another lovely city and I sure haven’t been disappointed. I’m billeted in the old quarter again and of course I’ve made my customary visit to the cathedral, a more modern post-gothic structure. The interior was clad in white marble which made for a nice effect and I was surprised to find the tomb of Spanish composer Manuel de Falla in the crypt. He did hail from the city though.

Lots of nods to Christopher Columbus in the city (as in Seville, and indeed many southern Spanish cities). To be honest though I’m done. I spent the afternoon on the beach because, well sometimes when you’re on holiday, nothing else but a few hours lying on the sand and going for a swim will do. I’ve reached saturation point on this, the last day of my Spanish tour. I’ve loved it, even the difficult moments (yes Sevilla, I’m looking at you), but I’ll be happy to get back to Granada tomorrow.

Size isn’t everything. Except, perhaps when it comes to cathedrals. Size is kind of the point with them. The bigger and more cavernous they are the smaller and more insignificant they make you feel. In a good way I think. And Seville has a doozy.

The city boasts what is officially recognized as the largest cathedral in the world. A fact so stark it requires no further embellishment. However, my own personal desire to visit this place was fired long before I knew of its record busting credentials. Years ago I read a quote attributed to its 15th century builders which ran thus, “Let us create such a building future generations will take us for lunatics.” Oh yeah I thought, that’s the kind of thing I wanna see.

Well, today I did. And boy were those guys lunatics.

You can read the stats elsewhere. They sound a bit dry in black and white. It’s the experience of being swallowed by it that matters. I know there are deeply felt arguments against the veneration of these behemoths. How many workers were killed in these constructions? How much money was poured into the projects? Shouldn’t the worship of a Christian God be a little more focused on, you know, people? I don’t dispute any of those objections. I’ve voiced them myself to different degrees many times over the years.

But I swear those Middle-Age lunatics were onto something. There are few other places in our cities where you can walk in from the streets and feel such an immediate sense of paradoxical awe. It’s like suddenly being reminded of your place in the cosmos. Everywhere and nowhere. In an infinite universe in which everything is expanding away from everything else it can be logically argued that each one of us is the very center of all experience. And yet it also holds true that what we think of as the universe is simply an internal creation, something merely mapped out in our brains from the blueprints handed over by our five senses. Cathedrals give the same perplexing mix of soaring majesty and crushing nothingness.

I’m not talking about religion. I’m talking about soul.

I have visited several cathedrals on this trip and the cocktail of near impossible architecture and heavy religious symbolism always works its magic. Sure, it’s an illusory, nebulous thing, a kind of virtual reality, but it provokes introspection each time and for me that is of real value.

At the end of the day they are just buildings. Do they justify the undoubted sufferings of those who constructed them? All those destroyed lives. All those broken families. Is the laying of a few stone slabs worth the life of a person? How can we ever square off the death of one man against the life of two, or a hundred, or a thousand others? I don’t know.

That was Cáceres. It’s a relatively small city but it packs a big punch and I liked it very much. I don’t really know where to begin other than that I shouldn’t waste time describing places and buildings you can read about elsewhere on the Internet.

After initially getting lost on my way to the hotel (not the first time) I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was adjacent to Plaza Mayor. A great location for exploring the old town. The atmosphere here was far less frenetic than in Salamanca and all the better for that.

On this trip I’ve enjoyed the relaxed nature of the smaller towns, like Tarragona and Oviedo, as much as the big cities. They are perfectly complementary to one another. Cáceres sits in between the two types I think. It has the feel of a small place, but can boast one of the most preserved and impressive historic quarters of any city in Spain.

The gothic cathedral was a highlight for me as was the aforementioned Plaza Mayor with its sloping floor. Clearly modern developers have been kept well away from the centre of Cáceres. A very wise decision.

Yesterday’s bus journey from Oviedo to Salamanca was a test of stamina to say the least. Punctuated by stops at smaller towns the trip took more than five hours, at least three of which were through the very uninspiring Castilla y León landscape. This region is the largest in Spain and shares the same characterless flat plains as the other ‘Castilla’, Castilla La Mancha over to the east.

The day had started so dramatically. Oviedo, a place that could rub shoulders quite easily with Moffat, Kelso and Peebles in the Scottish borders, was cool and blanketed under a low dull sky when we left the bus station. I’d glimpsed the stunning Cordillero Cantábrica and the Picos de Europa the day before (2,600 metres), shrouded in wet cloud as our bus chugged along the coast from Pais Vasco and now we were climbing the western fringe of the peaks. Crossing the range we found ourselves in a world of swirling greys and unbelievably thick green forest. It was wonderfully different.

We went through several short mountain tunnels, the last of which spat us out into a completely different world. Suddenly the sky was blue, the sun was shining, and immediately a road sign informed us we were in León. Initially the landscape, though different, was equally stunning, with huge rocks and blue green lakes passing by my window. Half an hour later though we’d settled into the more typical flat featureless plains of the area and that was how it stayed until we rolled in Salamanca.

At least I felt I was back in a version of Spain I was familiar with. Heat and sun, scorched earth and tapas bars (though still places offering the northern variety ‘pinchos’;).

Salamanca is home to one of the world’s oldest universities, much of which is situated centrally around the historic buildings of the city. Students who study here are very lucky I think. It’s extremely picturesque. As it’s late June there were not so many students around but the bars and restaurants were more than compensated by the hordes of tourists.

I’d still felt a little fatigued when I’d left Oviedo. The long bus journey hadn’t helped much but arriving in a city as stunning as Salamanca had lifted the spirits once more. I’ll have a couple of days here before hitting the road again. I hope I can get a little more rest before facing the bus station again.

I didn’t see the best of Oviedo. I was exhausted when I arrived so decided to use my time here to recharge the batteries. It’s a nice place to do that. The centre of town has a wonderful park, the type that could easily exist anywhere between Land’s End and John O’Groats.

I also loved the statue of Woody Allen on one of the main thoroughfares. More on Asturias later. I’ve another bus to catch.

I don’t know what will happen to me in the future but I hope to cross paths once more with Pais Vasco. Bilbao was a perfect accompaniment to San Sebastian. I think they exist in a kind of yin and yang, combining as a whole to impart the region with its cultural focus. Surprisingly, neither city is actually the capital of the area. That honour belongs to the much less heralded Vitoria-Gasteiz but that’s a place clearly in the shadow of its sibling cities.

Though it’s a compact city Bilbao has the highest population of the three and I got the distinct impression it’s a city that takes itself seriously. That’s not to say it’s dour, far from it, but there’s a sense of pragmatism mixed with the style. San Sebastian, with its three beaches and sprawling colonial style charm, is much more laid back. Though Bilbao is newly famous for its leading edge modern architecture it still carries the scars of an industrial past. It’s a proud working class city.

What really struck me about the glitzy new image was how integrated the modern buildings were with the city and its people. The Iberdrola Tower, at 165 metres the tallest structure in Pais Vasco, disgorges its workers into the city centre bars and cafeterias. A few hundred metres away the iconic Guggenheim Art Gallery looks totally at home alongside the Rio Nervion and the stylish Palacio de Congresos y de la Música. A little further along rises the impressive new San Mames stadium, home of Athletic Bilbao. All of these modern structures provide functional service to Bilbao and its citizens. I couldn’t help but make the comparison with the futuristic art and science park in Valencia which, though incredibly spectacular, felt a lot like something very silly bolted onto the edge of city, not separate but not really a part of things either. Maybe I do Valencia a disservice. If so, I apologise.

But now I must leave Pais Vasco, head across Cantabria and over to the neighbouring community of Asturias and the city of Oviedo. I don’t have any preconceptions of Oviedo. I gather it’s a sedate place and that’s just what I need. I’m also looking forward to travelling deeper into the north-west of this country.

I’m in a country within a country. There is a clear feeling of having crossed a border into another realm even though the Basque Country (Pais Vasco) still politically remains part of Spain. Euskera. That’s what they speak here. And no one outside of Pais Vasco understands it. No one even understands the origins of the language. Linguists know it to be an ancient tongue, perhaps harking back to pre-Latin times. Going into a cafe and listening to the locals reminds me of the holidays of my childhood when I occasionally walked into a village shop in some remote corner of North Wales and heard incomprehensible babble. Clever souls that they are it seems everyone also speaks Spanish and a bit of English. The French border is very close so I dare say French is widely spoken too.

If I was a Spanish citizen I might be upset at the thought of one day losing Pais Vasco to independence. San Sebastian (Donostia) is one of the most beautiful cities I’ve ever visited. It has three beaches, each with a different character, and my hostal was situated right on top of Zurriola Beach, famous for its rolling surf. The people are friendly and welcoming. The food is outstanding. The architecture, though on much less grand a scale than larger Spanish cities, is elegant and the city is vibrant and easy to navigate. If you’re a sun worshipper you might not be enamoured by a climate that’s cooler and wetter than the tropical Spain of the costas but I found it perfect. A paradise then for surfers, foodies, photographers, culture vultures. In fact, a paradise. Full stop.

It’s general election day here in Spain. They’ve had a hung parliament for six months after last December’s election failed to produce a clear winner. Thankfully the political problems here in Pais Vasco are consigned to the past and the area now enjoys a degree of devolved power. Certainly Donostia seems to be a city at peace with its place in the scheme of things.

I’ve become one of those annoying people on trains. No, not the type who yells into his mobile phone for 45 minutes, but the more passive aggressive irritant – the one who gets his laptop out and starts ‘working’. I’m typing this as I sit in coach number 4, seat 4a, on my way by rail from Tarragona to San Sebastian. I’m hoping the people around me think I’m doing important stuff so I’m taking great care every now and then to pause and glance thoughtfully out of the window. It adds to the persona.

And as I peer through that grimy window I’ve noticed a sea-change in the landscape. It’s slowly greening up as I get further north. There were even a few spots of rain last night in Tarragona and according to this morning’s weather forecast it’ll be raining properly by the time I arrive in Pais Vasco (the Basque Country) around lunchtime. San Sebastian is one of the more eagerly anticipated stops on this tour. I’ve seen and heard a lot about how wonderful it is. Even the promise of rain sounds enticing. Already, after barely a few weeks of Andalusian summer, the thought of walking in cooling rain feels almost exotic to me.

Final thoughts on Tarragona then. As with Cartagena, I think it took me a while to get the true vibe of the place. During late afternoon I had been feeling exhausted but a couple of hours on the beach fixed me right up. Then, late last night as I wandered around the old quarter, I think I really tuned into the place. It seemed at least half the town’s population had gathered in the myriad bars, cafes and restaurants. Many of them (of all ages), were dressed in sweat soaked ‘castelleros’ costumes looking as if they had been through some punishing training work and were now enjoying their well-earned refreshment. A lovely carefree atmosphere suffused the whole place and it left me feeling very warm towards Tarragona.

I’m beginning to see that all I can do on this trip is dip my toes into the cultural waters of each region. A day or two can only give a taste of what really lies beneath. That’s fascinating enough in its own way and I’m content to walk around and take my photographs for now. I imagine that after I return home the passage of time will draw me back to one or two of these places for further adventures. We’ll see.

I see most of the people around me are now asleep so I think it’s time to close the laptop down. I’ll just look out of the window for a bit. No sign of any rain just yet.

I checked into the wrong hotel by mistake yet the receptionist booked me in, having seemingly confirmed my booking in her records. She made some disapproving comment about Brexit as she checked my passport. Finally she gave me my room key, first floor, number 103. It turned out to be the wrong key.

When I walked back down to reception, tired and annoyed, she told me I was in fact at the wrong hotel. She then asked for the key back.

The right hotel was on the next block. No, I don’t know why she checked me in.

I can’t imagine there are many better ways for the first time visitor to arrive in Valencia than to walk out of El Estació Del Nord into the brilliant early evening summer sunshine. What an absolutely stunning moment. The preamble into the station had given no clues. As our train had decelerated through out of town industrial estates and then swathes of regulation apartment blocks my only thought was to anxiously wonder how difficult it was going to be to find my hotel.

All that was forgotten as I stood gaping at the junction of Carrer de Xativa and Avenida del Marques de Sotelo. Perhaps I’d merely become accustomed to living in a relatively small city? Whatever, I felt like a country boy taking his first steps into the big metropolis as I wheeled my suitcase down the Avenida, eyes pulled constantly upwards to stare at the magnificent buildings. So many things to see, so many people, and so much traffic!

Though I found the hotel quickly it was a bit of a disappointment. It had seemed a ridiculously cheap price for such a central location and now I understood why. It was an almost comic parody of clunky plumbing, gloomy décor, and unpleasant looking stains so I quickly got back out onto the street to explore further. I had my first Valencian paella and that certainly didn’t disappoint.

After a couple of hours a kind of fatigue set in, the kind you get when you visit a museum or art gallery. There’s only so much you can take in and one magnificent building starts to look just like another. Enough for day one.

Next day I took in architecture of an entirely different kind. In the afternoon I visited the art and science park. Nowadays it seems that technological advances mean that the only limit to what fanciful ideas can be turned into buildings lies with the architect’s own imagination. These buildings were bizarre and well worth visiting. I felt like I was on the set of a science fiction film as I strolled in amongst them. My only issue there was that though they look amazing at first glance, when you are close up to them the build quality seems a little shoddy. I don’t imagine they’ll last anywhere near as long as Valencia’s more classical buildings. But then maybe that’s not the point of them? They’re a kind of architectural fast food. Great fun but ultimately unsatisfying. When I left the park I didn’t really feel that I’d ever want to go back.

Earlier in the day I’d visited another keenly anticipated venue. As any true football fan will tell you real football stadium gems of the beautiful game are not necessarily the Wembleys and Bernabeus of this world. Such stadia may be the hubris of corporate patrimony but if we’re talking about iconic arenas of the sport you need look no further than Liverpool’s Anfield, Borussia Dortmund’s Westfalenstadion and Valencia CF’s Mestalla. Whatever success these clubs have achieved over the years has been built on the passionate support of their fans rather than the chequebook (additional cash always helps of course).

The Mestalla was truly awesome. Even on a quiet summer evening, with club football temporarily halted for the duration, the stadium exuded an enormous, and not altogether benign charisma. It wasn’t particularly easy to find, nestling as it does in the suburb that gives it its name. Yet when I finally stumbled across it it seemed to rise vertically from nowhere, and rise on up forever. I can’t vouch for those who have no interest in football. Amongst the magnificence of what Valencia has to offer the stadium visit was my personal highlight. That, and the food. I'll finish off my visit to Valencia with another paella tonight.

So that was Cartagena then. I’m left with mixed feelings. To use a football analogy it was like the opening game of a major tournament that you’ve looked forward to for ages. You sit through all the preliminaries then watch the game. And you wonder why you bothered. They’re always dull affairs aren’t they? Usually 1:0 to the hosts and both sides going at it half throttle.

No, that’s a bit harsh. There was a small sense of anti-climax I have to say, but there were mitigating circumstances. Firstly, by the time I arrived I was exhausted. Yesterday was a long day and truth be told I hadn’t yet shrugged off the frazzle of work. Secondly, I like to explore places on foot getting my bearings as I go, but unfortunately I spent an hour and a half slowly walking out of the city, heading north instead of south. I know. It hardly seems possible. And no, I never thought to ask anyone where I was because I’m a bloke.

By the time I’d extricated myself from a less salubrious part of town and refuelled with a drink and some food Cartagena was fighting a losing game.

Things did pick up in the second half. It was as if Cartagena threw on some star players for the last twenty minutes. I felt reinvigorated this morning in the short time I had before catching my train out of here and felt a lot more positive about the place.

In other news I had a terrible problem here with the accent. No one could understand me and vice versa. A waitress in a cafe had to call for help because I asked for a cup of tea.

I believe had I allowed myself more time here I’d have seen it in a better light. But there you go. There’s no time to linger and I move on to destination number 2, Valencia! It’s the spiritual home of paella. It sounds like my kind of place.